Even though I was an astrophysics major in college, I still had to take the mandatory number of English classes to graduate. The one which I actually enjoyed taking focused on fantasy/sci-fi lit. Some of my classmates had never read Tolkien before that class, where it's an annual re-read for me. (Come to think of it, it's been at least a couple years since I last cracked open the cover of the trilogy...)

I had read encyclopedias and animal-based fiction as a kid. I didn't enjoy the animated The Hobbit then. Perhaps I thought it should have been funny as it was a cartoon. . . My first foray into fantasy reading was in my Mythologies class in middle school. We read A Wizard of Earthsea and soon after I discovered how much I loved the Tolkien stuff